issue 26 Patch Notes for March 31st, 2020 - Issue 26, Page 5

[Erydanus]

On ‎3‎/‎31‎/‎2020 at 9:38 AM, The Curator said:

• Weapon Mastery > Shuriken: This power was erroneously set at half the intended recharge for it's damage. Recharge has now been increased from 3 to 6 seconds.
• Weapon Mastery > Explosive Shuriken: This power was doing 85% the damage it was meant to do in PvE, damage has been increased.

So I actually have this epic pool on my stalker. (Probably the only one who does, Ghost Widow's is so great...) I looked at him last night and Shuriken still has a 3 second recharge (slotted for him it's at 1.47 seconds). A nemesis invasion interrupted me looking at the power info, so I can't report if Explosive Shurken was unchanged as well.

[MunkiLord]

23 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

So I actually have this epic pool on my stalker. (Probably the only one who does, Ghost Widow's is so great...) I looked at him last night and Shuriken still has a 3 second recharge (slotted for him it's at 1.47 seconds). A nemesis invasion interrupted me looking at the power info, so I can't report if Explosive Shurken was unchanged as well.

Is it a coincidence that Nemesis invaded while you were trying to look an error? Or did the developers do that on purpose to cover themselves? After all, everything is a Nemesis plot.

[Jimmy]

32 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

So I actually have this epic pool on my stalker. (Probably the only one who does, Ghost Widow's is so great...) I looked at him last night and Shuriken still has a 3 second recharge (slotted for him it's at 1.47 seconds). A nemesis invasion interrupted me looking at the power info, so I can't report if Explosive Shurken was unchanged as well.

The commit for this may have gotten lost, we're looking into it.

6 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

Is it a coincidence that Nemesis invaded while you were trying to look an error? Or did the developers do that on purpose to cover themselves? After all, everything is a Nemesis plot.

Nothing to see here. Move along hero!

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, Erydanus said:

So I actually have this epic pool on my stalker. (Probably the only one who does, Ghost Widow's is so great...) I looked at him last night and Shuriken still has a 3 second recharge (slotted for him it's at 1.47 seconds). A nemesis invasion interrupted me looking at the power info, so I can't report if Explosive Shurken was unchanged as well.

This has now been fixed internally. Please check your in-game email for a Bug Hunter. Thanks!

[Heliopause]

Nicely done!  🙂   I'm particularly please to see you are monitoring and stamping out damaging exploits.

[WindDemon21]

I'll chime that the change to shadow maul while vastly better than it's previous version, it does feel odd having it still only be a range of 7ft, especially on non-tanks and making it just out of the range of damage auras to tell where you're going to hit. I'd like to see at bare minimum an 8ft range, if not 10ft as it's really the sets only only aoe,.

[biostem]

I love the asymmetrical costume options!  Any chance we could get the same treatment for shoulder options?  I'm also having a lot of fun with the Experimentation power pool.  Would it be possible for us to get the immobilizing wrist dart animation from the ninjitsu blaster secondary, as an alternate animation?  Thanks for all your hard work!

[Aberrant]

11 hours ago, biostem said:

I love the asymmetrical costume options!  Any chance we could get the same treatment for shoulder options?  I'm also having a lot of fun with the Experimentation power pool.  Would it be possible for us to get the immobilizing wrist dart animation from the ninjitsu blaster secondary, as an alternate animation?  Thanks for all your hard work!

They've said asymmetrical shoulders is in the works. A lot more mesh splitting required I think as lots of gloves already had right hand options due to robotic arms, but nearly no shoulder pieces have separate meshes. 

[srmalloy]

On 3/31/2020 at 6:38 AM, The Curator said:

Shadow Maul (Tanker, Scrapper, Brute, Stalker) is now a much larger, faster cone that's actually capable of easily hitting multiple targets - especially on tanks!

Sometimes I despair of the people in in-game chat being able to reason clearly, instead of being locked into preconceived ideas. There was an exchange about the changes to Shadow Maul, and I commented that I had seen a DPS decrease as a result of it. Before the update, I was able to take my Rad/Dark Tanker against a spawn of three white minions and with a bit of positioning, hit all three with Shadow Maul + Sands of Mu, and if they weren't resistant, could expect a take them all down. After the update, I could only do that with green mobs; against white mobs, it took a second application of Shadow Maul to take them down. This took more time with the second use of Shadow Maul, and was therefore a reduction in DPS.

 

The chat response varied, with "you're using it wrong" or "it's a wider cone and hits more targets" being common, and every single one fixated on the wider cone and increased target cap, assuming that you will have the full target cap every time  you use it, and completely ignored that my example specified a three-mob spawn in the comparison. Yes, if you have a sufficient number of targets, Shadow Maul will do more damage after the update. Assuming that you are going to have that greater number of targets all the time is not justifiable. All the theorycrafting in the world can't refute what actually happens in the game.

[ArchVileTerror]

You have an excellent point, srmalloy, and the change does negatively impact the way you used the Power.

But that's not "DPS."  What you're experiencing is a decrease in Practical Damage, which is frankly the more realistic measurement of damage as it relates to gameplay.  DPS and DPA are both great tools for theoretical applications of damage, but your example highlights why they fail to be ideal measurements for how people actually engage with the game mechanics regularly.

[srmalloy]

Effective DPS, then. I need to do X damage to each of these mobs to defeat them, and the change has required the damage to be spread over a greater time. The fact that there is 'leftover' damage in the attack when the mobs go down just makes it more inefficient, leaving me locked on the current targets spending End to no benefit instead of proceeding to the next spawn. At the character's current level, the difference between the two attacks seems to be consistently 5-6 points of damage per aspect (smashing/negative) per tick, in that situation doing 40-48 fewer points of damage per target, which is made up in the first tick of the second Shadow Maul attack, wasting 3/4 of its potential.

Edited April 4, 2020 by srmalloy

[Wavicle]

25 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Effective DPS, then. I need to do X damage to each of these mobs to defeat them, and the change has required the damage to be spread over a greater time. The fact that there is 'leftover' damage in the attack when the mobs go down just makes it more inefficient, leaving me locked on the current targets spending End to no benefit instead of proceeding to the next spawn. At the character's current level, the difference between the two attacks seems to be consistently 5-6 points of damage per aspect (smashing/negative) per tick, in that situation doing 40-48 fewer points of damage per target, which is made up in the first tick of the second Shadow Maul attack, wasting 3/4 of its potential.

If you're fighting 3 guys it is, and was, more efficient to stick to single target attacks. You don't NEED an aoe against 3 guys.

Against MORE than 3 guys the new Shadow Maul is more efficient than the old one.

[Wavicle]

To put it another way:

In the situations you're worried about, where there aren't enough targets for SM to be efficient, you shouldn't use it. That is no more true now than it used to be.

[Cinnder]

Not sure if this is related to the changes in the costume creator code, but I'm now having an issue where every time I make a change to my costume, all the colours of my powers get changed to red.  And this has even overwritten my saved customisation files.

 

EDIT: Working on getting exact steps to reproduce...

Edited April 5, 2020 by Cinnder

[Doc_Scorpion]

19 hours ago, Wavicle said:

In the situations you're worried about, where there aren't enough targets for SM to be efficient, you shouldn't use it. That is no more true now than it used to be.

Not using it according to iron standards is a problem at lower levels where SM is a significant part of your attack chain.

[Wavicle]

Just now, Doc_Scorpion said:

Not using it according to iron standards is a problem at lower levels where SM is a significant part of your attack chain.

It's not though. And it never was. Stop using it at all when there aren't enough mobs there. 

[Doc_Scorpion]

Just now, Wavicle said:

It's not though. And it never was.

o.0  Right.  When I only have 3-4 melee attacks, and one of them is SM - it doesn't impact me to not use it because it's "not efficient".

[Wavicle]

Just now, Doc_Scorpion said:

o.0  Right.  When I only have 3-4 melee attacks, and one of them is SM - it doesn't impact me to not use it because it's "not efficient".

Perhaps it impacts you very very slightly. However if you go and fight larger groups you will find you are much much better than before. So I suppose it’s a trade off, but it’s an extremely good one.

[Wavicle]

Endurance cost for Mastermind's Discharge seems a little high.

[siolfir]

On 4/4/2020 at 2:03 PM, srmalloy said:

There was an exchange about the changes to Shadow Maul, and I commented that I had seen a DPS decrease as a result of it.

You should. Shadow Maul used to do more damage than it should, even if it was a single target attack, based on its recharge and endurance cost.

 

It now matches the formula (despite being pure DoT, which typically received bonus damage in the past). The damage per activation went way down due to this, but the animation was sped up, so the damage per second of activation only went down slightly - but even in the patch notes it mentions that it went down.

 

That other people are telling you that the arc is wider and hits more targets means not only are they not listening to your complaint, but didn't pay attention to that part of the patch notes. They may also have been telling you to increase your spawn sizes so that you end up getting more damage out of it than you used to, because you have to hit more targets to do so.

[WindDemon21]

The new cone is definitely nicer for aoe but they should really make the base range 10ft. 7ft is just too short especially for scrappers.

[JayboH]

I would be willing to test a 10 ft range on it, if that's even an option.

[MangoKulfi]

• The following powers Soul Noir theme of this power was executing the wrong animation and missing FX. This has been fixed:

  • Sentinel > Dark Blast > Abyssal Gaze

  • Defender >Dark Blast > Petrifying Gaze

  • Scrapper > Epic > Darkness Mastery > Petrifying Gaze

  • Stalker > Epic > Darkness Mastery > Petrifying Gaze

Defender > Dark Miasma > Petrifying Gaze no longer has the "lasso" animation because of this right?  I hadn't been on my 1st costume and thought it was just power customization being on default, then saw the stare down animation on my 1st costume too.

 

Any chance of adding it back as a new alternate animation?

 

[CrimsonOne]

Love the asymmetry stuff!

Edited April 7, 2020 by CrimsonOne

[Ferrus_Xeno]

First I would want to say Thank you for all the work the entire homecoming team has put into the game!

 

Second:

 

• Shadow Maul (Tanker, Scrapper, Brute, Stalker) is now a much larger, faster cone that's actually capable of easily hitting multiple targets - especially on tanks!
  • Arc increased from 45 to 120 degrees
  • Recharge increased from 8 to 11 seconds
  • Cast Time reduced from 3.07 to 2.35 seconds
  • Damage lowered from scale 2.156 to 1.6184
    • DPS reduction is minor, it has only been lowered from scale 0.653 to scale 0.645
  • Target Cap increased from 10 to 16 for Tankers
  • Target Cap increased from 5 to 10 for Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers
• Dark Melee was under-performing in the AoE department. The aim of this change is to increase the AoE potential of the set whilst having minimal impact on the single target potential.

 

Are these change (mainly the arc to 120 degrees) going to propagate to blaster secondaries? As of now, for me at least, this is a must skip power on my dark blasters.